Heritage in the Spotlight is a wide-ranging project that promotes Timisoara as European Capital of Culture in 2021. Through this project, Timisoara's neighbourhoods are highlighted through the allegory of the senses: Iosefin (Auzul), Elisabetin (Tactile), Fabric (The Vision). There are exhibitions with three components: pavilion (National Museum of Banat - Maria Theresia Bastion,), street (in situ) and digital (website www.spotlight-timisoara.eu and mobile apps).
2019 is the year dedicated Iosefin district, through the exhibition opened in the Theresia Bastion Iosefin district and Valeria Dr. Pintea - a novel in an exhibition. It illustrates the daily life of the Iosefin district through the stories Valeriei Dr. Pintea (1893-1984), born Chirița. Originally from Lugo, she married doctor Vasile Pintea (1913) and became a resident of Iosefinului. Valeria was a keen observer of everyday life and a good storyteller, her memories of the neighbourhood and its people coming down to us through the pen of her granddaughter - Liana Maria Gomboșiu, author of the novel Valeria Dr. A citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then of Romania, Valeria is above all one of the many inhabitants of Iosefinului.
Iosefin (German: Josephstadt, Hungarian: Józsefkülváros), originally called Maierele Noi or Maierele Germane, was a village of German settlers on both sides of the Bega Canal, founded in 1744, which took the name Iosefin in 1773, after Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Built outside the fortress, from which it was separated by a zone non aedificandi, the Iosefin district developed separately from it, around the Bega canal and later in the railway station area, both of which were used for transporting goods.
The great buildings appear after 1890, when military prohibitions are lifted and the city expands, which is why most of the buildings bear the mark of the Secession architectural trends - with its national and Art Deco variants. Situated in the south-eastern part of the city, following the demolition of Timișoara's fortification walls, the district is today part of the city, its gateway being the Traian Bridge. It borders to the north with Mehala and Cetate, east with Elisabetinto the south with Fratelia and Freidorf, and to the west with the city outskirts.
A predominantly German neighbourhood, where all the nationalities of Timișoara live together, with important buildings and institutions, Iosefin is illustrated by the event proposed by the organisers with 16 points of maximum attraction, without the list of these being exhausted.